by Grant Farley
I check out the sky for hawks. I should make some sort of speech, but I can’t think what to say that wouldn’t sound stupid next to what he’s about to do, so I just toss him. The Old Tumbler flies straight for the only cloud in the sky. He’s taking off for good. What will I tell the old man?
Then he comes to that full stop. And he starts the slide. Halfway down he goes into the tumble. I take my eyes off him just long enough to judge the reaction. Not as great as I hoped, but he’s got their attention.
“Well?” I ask.
“Would’ve been neat if he hadn’t made it,” Amy says, rubbing Peabody under the chin. Even Peabody looks just barely interested. “Do they ever not make it?”
I pretend I don’t hear her. “What did you think, Mom?”
“Interesting, dear.” She’s wearing her black-and-white waitress uniform, which always makes me sad. “I’ve got to get to work now.”
“What’s wrong with that bird?” Stevie asks.
“Yeah,” Suzy adds, “you ought to get your money back. It’s . . . funny.”
About the only one who appreciates is Charley. He’s still standing there after the others are long gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Defective
The Old Tumbler is checking me out from that little launching pad door I leave open most of the time now. He’s bobbing his head from one side to the other to get a view from both eyes. The Schwinn parts lie on an old blanket almost underneath the coop. It’s about the only spot where there’s some shade. It’ll hit a hundred for the third day in a row. Charley sits on the edge of a cinder block, watching me with that blank expression that drives a lot of guys nuts.
“Time to put this sucker together,” I say.
The Old Tumbler coos.
I run my hands over that bike frame. Three coats of primer and four coats of gunmetal gray. Sanded smooth after each coat. I helped Mr. Olson restock at Big O’s Hardware and Feed in exchange for the paint and for my promise it won’t be for graffiti.
It takes forever to pull out the pedals, which are rusted into the frame. I sand and oil and repack them.
Amazing Grace coos from inside one of the nesting boxes. She’s been sitting on that egg a long time and she means business. The Old Tumbler coos back at her from the launching pad, but he don’t take flight.
I bolt on the wheels. The chain is brand-new from Mike’s Bike Shop.
The funky smell of the coop just sort of simmers in that heat. A redwood, straw, feathers, and bird shit kind of smell. I love the smell of that coop.
No fenders. This bike is streamlined.
The swamp cooler fan rattles and shimmies in the trailer window. It’s propped up on a pair of two-by-fours that could split any day. The whole side of the trailer hums.
All that’s left that I need for this bike is the handlebars. I stand up, staring at that poor headless thing. It’s not like I haven’t been looking. You just don’t rush into something like that.
I go into the bathroom and scrub off the grease.
“RJ! RJ!” Charley calls from out back.
I run out and Charley is hopping up and down, pointing at the coop. I go over and look inside. There’s this squeaking noise coming from inside the nesting box. I open the big door. The Old Tumbler bobs his head back and forth and rubs his beak against the floor and puffs out his chest. I lean inside the coop and peek in the nesting box. The thing inside is all wet, with an oversized head, bug eyes, and not one feather.
Charley keeps tugging at my shirt.
“Jeez, Charley, I won’t get any money off that thing unless it’s in a freak show.”
Charley tries to crawl over my back, so I let him look.
The Old Tumbler coos like crazy.
“That’s enough, Charley. Give them some privacy.”
I close the big door. He’s still staring as I turn and walk away. Maybe he’s thinking if he can’t run, maybe he can fly.
I head for Leguin’s, just cruising on the Stingray over asphalt shimmering with heat waves, cruising like some cholo lowrider. He’ll want to hear the bad news about the baby bird. Little kids are playing on the squeaky dead grass of the hills. They’re shouting just to hear their voices skipping through the hot air like a mean fastball, and I wish I was there, but I won’t ever be that age again.
Buying Time has to end somewhere, so why don’t I just lay it all out to the old man? Maybe he’d even give me something to take to the Blackjacks. No, that wouldn’t be his style. He’d say something grown-up like You must go to the police. He’d say something lame that would get us dead. Or worse, he’d stare at me with a feel-sorry look.
Sparklers left over from the Fourth stick out of my pocket and brush against my back as I pedal.
What if Leguin decided to do something about the Blackjacks himself? He’s too weak to make a stand against them, but somehow he’d have his weapons. One could be Roxanne. One could be me.
The thought hits me so hard I stop the bike and sit down by the side of the road. What if he’s already using me and I don’t even know it?
I sit there long enough to feel the pounding heat give way to an evening breeze sliding across the dry grass. Getting up and heading for that old man’s house is one of the hardest things I ever did.
I don’t much remember the ride or stopping at A&W, but here I am hopping up the steps of Leguin’s house with a bag of burgers and fries. I stare through the screen and see him lying on the couch.
“Are you dead or are you asleep?”
“I can’t seem to manage either one.” A washcloth covers his eyes.
“Well, if you’re planning to die, don’t count on me sticking around.”
He lifts up a corner of the washcloth and stares out at me. He scowls at the greasy bag, but I figure even he can do better than rice and bananas.
“Are you going to stand out there all evening?”
I step inside. When he’s lying down, he’s so small and shriveled that it looks like that couch has swallowed him whole. There’s only one glass on the coffee table. The bottle of sherry is nearly empty.
I take the bag in the kitchen and pour the fries on a couple of plates. He won’t eat unless it’s on a plate. The cheeseburgers are lukewarm and soggy. I pour my soda into one of the crystal glasses. The plan about sneaking back at night and stealing the crystal feels easier than ever, except that I still can’t do it.
He’s fighting the couch, trying to get up as I put the plates on the coffee table. I lift him so he can sit on the edge, and he’s so light that he feels hollow. He really does look like a vampire, that hunched-over creature with the hooked nose and creepy fingers.
“The tumbler hatched.”
“You don’t sound very pleased at this particular nativity.” He gums a fry.
“Well, I seen a few things get born, and I know all about how they can look ugly coming out, but that baby is defective.”
He snorts so hard it sounds like he sucked a fry up his nose. I get him a glass of water and he’s still snorting. He waves the water away and downs some sherry.
“Child, it is supposed to look that way,” he wheezes.
“I knew that.”
We eat without talking except for when he laughs and snorts, remembering what I said. I don’t like being laughed at, so maybe I’ll tell him a story to get it out of his head.
“I got a tale.”
He pushes his plate away and leans back into the sofa.
Maybe it’s the idea of getting born defective that has me telling this story, or maybe it’s just the need for cash.
The Tale of Charley’s Toes and Their Greater Purpose
My all-time most favorite business was selling toes. Not my own, of course. I sold my brother Charley’s toes. A quarter to see four, a half dollar to see all seven to eight and a half, depending on how you read
his toe lines. And a buck for the big toe show for an audience of three or more. A bargain. His toes put on a good show. Charley didn’t mind. At least, he never said he did. He even let me make them up special, like when I painted them green for the St. Patrick’s Day toe show. What a great draw it would’ve been if I could’ve painted little faces, or maybe even Christmas trees, on his toenails. Except he didn’t have no toenails. Of course, if he had, there wouldn’t have been a show in the first place. Life’s got its twists like that. There were operations to fix his toes. Some even helped. Then Mom lost her insurance about the same time a doctor botched one up and ruined my brother for walking and it took another operation just to get him back to normal—his normal, not ours. Uncle Ted, who belongs to Amy, always said things like, “God never errs, boys. There must be some greater purpose to Charley’s toes!” I always hated when he’d say that ’cause for a week after that Charley, whenever he’d see me, he’d wiggle his sorry excuses for toes with that smirk on his face, just knowing they were signed up for some Greater Purpose.
Well, the last toe show began in sixth grade with this brand-new kid in the valley, Mike Dudley, who everyone called Milk Dud. I started giving him the usual line about my brother’s toes. You know, sort of catching his interest, building him to the clincher, when I’d offer to show him—for a small fee. You probably know all about that, what with being in the insurance racket.
Anyway, I got POed when Dud started laughing. I didn’t allow laughing at Charley’s toes. That was always the number one rule at any toe show. But Dud said he wasn’t laughing at his toes. He was laughing ’cause his sister had a whole foot that was weird and it would outgross my brother’s toes anytime, anyplace. Well, no way, Jose. We got a bet going, and things got out of hand. Seeing as it was near Halloween, we set the contest for Debby Welsh’s Halloween party.
I figured I’d better get Charley a bitchin’ pair of new sneakers for his show. The A-number-one rule any time we went for shoes was to pick out a young, cute saleslady. So we sat down and the saleslady came over, not suspecting nothing. She got out that metal thing with the slides on it and pulled up a stool in front of Charley. She had these big brown eyes and was hands down the cutest and youngest shoe lady we’d ever had. Charley stuck a foot out and she began to unlace it as I tried hard not to snicker. Charley just stared at her with that blank look of his. Finally, she got that shoe off, wads of TP dropping out, and she frowned. She rolled her big browns up at Charley and he smiled that sweet smile and so she just pulled his socks on down.
Usually, the shoe ladies tried to hide their reaction. That never worked, of course. Sometimes they’d say something like Oh God! One thing they always did was drop Charley’s foot like they thought they’d catch some weird disease. But this shoe lady, she forgot to even drop the foot. She just sat there dripping tears on it for the longest time. Charley smiled and watched those pretty little hands cradling his foot.
Anyway, Charley went to that party as an angel, and the halo my mom made gave it just the right touch. I went as a devil. When Milk Dud arrived, he played their entrance for all it was worth. He flipped aside the cape of his Dracula costume, which fit his personality perfect, and waved his sister in. She stood staring at us, a Little Bo Peep all the way from the pretty little dress to that shepherd’s stick. She was a couple months older than my brother, even though they were both in the second grade. She had long wavy hair even blonder than my brother’s, huge green eyes, and a sweet heart-shaped face. She stepped slowly into the room. Man, the feet! Plastic shiny shoes with lacy ankle socks. The right shoe was twice as big as the left.
Charley just patted me on the back and said he’d give it his best shot. What a gutsy kid. Guys shouted side bets all around. And the odds all went to Lisa after they eyeballed her shoes. Lisa went first. She sat down, sniffling the whole time. First she inched off her little left shoe and her little left sock. The audience gasped as out popped the prettiest, most perfect foot anyone had ever seen. Dud was sharp, playing the contrast angle like that. Her lower lip sort of shook as she unlaced that oversized right shoe. Well, as she unrolled that lacy sock, I fell back in my seat. The crowd gasped. There was no way, Jose, that Charley could match that. A couple girls made quick exits.
But Charley, he was no quitter. He sat down real slow, cracked his knuckles, and began unwinding the plaid laces. But interest had already faded. Half the guys wandered away before he even had that first shoe unlaced. It was too bad, really. That was the all-time best show he’d ever given. By the time he reached the finale, the room was practically empty except for the judges, who were already arguing over who bet what.
That’s when it happened. Lisa hobbled over to Charley and threw her arms around his neck, kissing him on the forehead, on the cheek, on the lips, and knocking his halo all crooked. Charley took it pretty good, that being the first time he’d been kissed by a girl and all.
That was a tough year for me, what with Charley strutting around the house wiggling those digits at me with that expression like there was some Greater Purpose to it all. Asking me if I had a girlfriend yet. Saying how he preferred older women.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Half a Sister
Leguin lies with his head back, his breath raspy. Toe Dough is one of my favorite tales, but it just put him to sleep like he was one of the sibs. I could walk out right now with anything I feel like. I rise, holding the crystal glasses, and edge toward the front door.
“Where are you going with that crystal?” He stares at me through half-open lids, and I know he wasn’t asleep. Had it been a trick?
“I . . . I was taking them out to the kitchen to clean up.”
“Leave it.” He leans forward. “Sit down.”
I should say something to take his mind off the crystal. “What was Roxanne doing here? I mean, you said she’d been here three times. I think . . . I think you owe me some explaining.”
“I do not,” he says.
“I’ve been doing chores and telling you all these lame stories, most of them I haven’t told to nobody, and you say you don’t owe me? Worse, I’ve been . . . been . . .”
“Yes?” He studies me and it’s almost like he knows about the Blackjacks. But how could he?
“Nothing.” I look away.
“How old were you when your father died?” he asks.
“What does that . . . Three. I was three.”
“How did he die?”
“War killed him.”
“But he wasn’t in combat at the time?”
“War can do that. Kill you after. But I’ve seen your photo in there, so I figure you know all about what war can do.”
“Indeed. How old was Roxanne?”
“When my dad died? Five, maybe six, I guess. But what does that—”
“Your father is also Roxanne’s father.”
I stare at the old man’s face, at the melting eyes. How could he even know this? She told him. Was she telling the truth? I see back through my life at all the mean things Roxanne done to me, at all the hateful things her mom said. This hate went even deeper than just some jealousy between our moms. Way deeper.
“RJ . . .”
“Just shut up. Okay? Just . . . let me think.”
And then all the weird comments people made to me over the years make sense . . .
And then there’s Mom’s tale of that hate between our families. Sometimes a lie is not what is twisted around inside a tale, but what lurks outside. That’s the worst kind of lie. The kind Mom made to me all these years.
“That means . . .” One second Roxanne is just this freakish girl, and the next she’s my half a sister. I try and squeeze this idea into my world, but I can’t. That one little word, “sister,” changes everything. “I gotta go.”
“Wait.”
I stop at the door, staring out the screen at the sky that’s doing its fade. But I don’t turn
around.
“Look out here,” I say. “What did you call this time?”
“L’heure bleue,” he whispers. “The blue hour.”
“People think a kid don’t remember that far back, but I do. Lying in bed waiting for him to come sing me to sleep. Holding a kite and wanting him to wrap his arms around me and grab the string so we’d share that feel of the wind tugging on it.”
My hand brushes the sparkler in my pocket. “Today is the fourteenth.”
“Yes. Bastille Day,” he says.
“I brought you a surprise.”
I step out on the dirt drive where he can see me through the open front door. I hold up the sparkler and light it and hold it over my head like the Statue of Liberty.
“Vive la France!” he shouts.
The sparks dance in the twilight, and I don’t even care if the whole world catches fire. But the world don’t burn and the sparkler fizzles. I stomp it out in the dirt, climb back up the steps, and plop in my chair.
“Thank you,” he says.
“No problem,” I say.
We sit a long time listening to the quiet.
“RJ, if Roxanne is in peril, then there is only one person who can help. There is only one person who cares.”
“You think I should care?” I stand. “If she’s half a sister, it also means she’s half a not sister, too. And that not half has been all she’s ever shown me. So now I’m supposed to take care of her, too? She’s the older one. Where was she all this time?”
He don’t answer.
It’s getting dark outside and we haven’t lit candles, so the house is crawling in shadows as I turn and leave without looking back.
I’m halfway up the hill behind the barn when it hits me that the old man never really did answer my question about what Roxanne had been doing there. Or did he, and I just didn’t hear it?
I sit near the top of the hill overlooking the old man’s house. The moon is just rising above Big Mama. The sky is lighter shades of purple, but the house is in shadow. A flicker of candlelight moves against the living room window. The screen door opens. The old man hobbles out without his cane, carrying a candle in one hand and something that looks like a book or bag in the other. He creeps around the outbuildings to the root cellar door. No way he could lift that door, but he does. He stops and looks around. I hold my breath as he stares up the hill to where I’m sitting. I don’t move, don’t breathe. He stays like that for a minute and then turns back to the cellar. He steps down inside, pulling the door shut over him.
